Long time lurker but first time poster. Just going to give a bit of context first so I don't drip feed.
I am 23, 5ft 8 and a size 12 bottom, size 8/10 top. I can't tell you my weight as I don't own scales - I got quite obsessed with the number on the scales as a teen (unhealthily so), so just go off how I feel and my clothes size. I carry the majority of my weight around my legs/bum/hips and have quite a muscular thigh – bit of a pear. I eat approx 1400 calories per day, sometimes less. Historically I have been a 8/small 10 bottom and 4/6 top, however only as a teenager or a very troubled adult.
I am trying my best to accept that now, as a woman, I am never going to look exactly the same as I did when I was 16 years old. This acceptance doesn't really come easily to me, and there have been periods of my young adult life when I would eat 700 calories per day and do 20k steps to achieve this; I have never been diagnosed with an eating disorder but recognize that a lot of doctors would see it that way.
My problem is that my mum seems to have fixated on my teenage figure and (at the time) loved to brag about me to her friends/show pictures – like when someone gets a new puppy and has to get everyone to admire it. She's made it an 'ideal' in her head, and to some degree I agree with her – I DID look best when I was skinny, however I know that this is just not how my body wants to be. To achieve this, I have to starve myself and at the points of my life when I have achieved 'perfection', my mind has been a very unpleasant place to be. I live with my mum and have no plans to move out soon, as I am a mature full time student – my point is that I have to have contact with her daily.
She will constantly say things to 'incentivise' me to lose weight, like 'if you get down to a 10 by September, I will buy you X'. Another popular one is 'I just know you so well and I know you're not happy being bigger'. I quarantined with my partner at the start of lockdown as my mum was shielding and I was still commuting to a busy city for work.. the first thing she had to say to me when I saw her for the first time was 'Oh I see you haven't put on TOO much weight then' (tone of voice said otherwise). We spoke to our neighbour for the first time in a while and the neighbour mentioned how I looked good, mum cut her off and said 'YES but she has put weight on though'.
She has also mentioned the above to my elderly grandmother, who fixates on things and will ask if I've lost any weight every time I speak to her as though I am horribly obese.
It's important to note that I have tried to get the point across that I'm pretty sure I had an eating disorder previously, and that I was only that way because I was depressed and not eating.. or I was barely more than a child. The problem is, though, is that she is incapable of seeing food issues as real ones – she eats to survive, and will just stop eating altogether without much trouble if she wants to lose weight. She doesn't 'love' food or look forward to it like I do. She also seems to think that, because I wasn't 5 stone wet through, it is impossible that I had an eating disorder. Basically she wouldn't be concerned if I went back to eating 700 calories, because she has routinely done it for years and therefore doesn't think it's dangerous.
I have dealt with this for years, so it doesn't make me upset in a weepy way. The issue I'm facing is more that she makes me consider whether I'm actually wrong, and I do actually look massive. I'm not happy with how I look at the minute because I don't currently have a healthy relationship with my body, and it seems that she cannot help reinforcing this. I don't eat enormous amounts, sometimes slipping to one meal per day, and she makes me feel as though I should be eating even less. I am trying to come to terms with the fact that I'm a woman now rather than a teenager, and if eating 1400 calories puts me at a size 12, so be it..... but her doing this makes it very difficult.
The whole debacle is also damaging our relationship, to the point where I didn't really feel much when we discovered she was very poorly late last year (in remission now). I feel that she would rather I looked how she wants at the expense of my happiness, rather than having to face the shame of having a size 12 daughter.. which is so far from what a mother should be in my mind. I am happy now, aside from my body image issues, and I am in a stable relationship... but it seems she preferred me when I was being messed about by a horrible boyfriend, barely ate and spent hours walking about at night to get my step count up. I see it as, at best, ignorant and, at worst, abusive.
I guess I just need advice on whether I should be seeing her behaviour differently than I do. I understand that everything above is from my own perspective and someone who is a mother (particularly a mother of girls) may have some sort of explanation for me. I am also running out of ideas with regards to how to cope with all of this, or how to explain in a way that will make her understand the damage she's doing.
So, am I being unreasonable for feeling this way? If you had a daughter who looked 'worse' than she used to, would you feel compelled to say something? Do you think I could be in denial and I'm not as 'average' as I thought? How can I cope with/change this? Help please.